What You Need To Know About Russia's "Berlin Group" And Their Global Assassination Hit List

Earlier this month, three Chechen men were walking down a busy
street in Istanbul when a single man shot them 11 times with a
silenced 9mm pistol. All were killed within 30 seconds.

The assassin got into a black car, reportedly a Ford Mondeo, and sped away.

The victims were all members of Istanbul's Chechen community. One
of the men killed was Berg-Haj Musayev, and the other men were
believed to be his bodyguards, reports
The Telegraph. Musayev was allegedly close to Russia's most
wanted man Doku Umarov, thought to be responsible for a suicide
bomb attack at a Moscow airport in January.

Turkish secret forces later raided the hotel room of the man they
suspected of being involved, acting on a tip. The assassin was
thought to be Alexander Zharkov, a 55-year-old Russian national
traveling on a diplomatic passport. They missed him by minutes,
but he left behind binoculars, a night vision scope and the
murder weapon.
The Moscow Times reports that Zharkov is also thought to have
been in the country during the murder of Umarov's spokesperson in
2009.

The incredible
professionalism of the murders led most observers to one
conclusion -- a member of Russia's "Berlin group", a group
swiftly becoming infamous for their covert brutality, was behind
them.

Der Spiegel reports that rumors abound of the "Berlin group"
planning attacks from Germany have proliferated on Chechen
underground websites in recent weeks. The group is suspected of a
number of attacks in Istanbul.

One Chechen website, Kavkaz
Center, alleges that there are six "hit groups" in Berlin,
funded by wealthy Russians and controlled by the Russian secret
service. The German government won't confirm this, but admits
there are reports of some 1,200 Chechen exiles and Russian
intelligence agents in the
city.

The incident has upset Istanbul's 1,500-member Chechen diaspora,
most of whom left Chechnya during the bloody war with Russia in
the 1990s and 2000s.

However, Russia is offering official indifference to the outrage.

"If the murdered men really were involved in the suicide bombing
then what has happened is a normal occurrence in a war," Maxim
Shevchenko, a Kremlin advisor, told
The Telegraph. "After all, they declared war on the Russian
state so it is logical that in response our special services have
a group of liquidators."

Indeed, while President, Vladimir Putin made clear that anywhere was
fair game for Chechen terrorist. "We will pursue the terrorists
wherever they go. If we find them in the toilet, we'll kill them
in the outhouse,"
he said.

As
Der Spiegel notes, it appears the group is working to
eliminate all the names on some sort of Chechen "hit list".